FTVMS 336
Horror Media
Please note: this is archived course information from 2017 for FTVMS 336.
Description
Explores horror’s aesthetic, experiential, and political dimensions, investigating why and how it has persisted as one of popular culture’s most vigorous and influential genres. Closely considers a range of classic and contemporary films, TV shows and video games, raising questions of power, affect and representation. How can horror films, TV shows and video games prompt us to think about the body – as a site of experience and object of discourse? How do they deal with questions of social repression, conflict and identity? How can horror appear to function as one of popular culture’s most conservative genres, and at the same time, one of its most radical? And how do contemporary television and video games recycle and adapt horror cinema’s thematic concerns?
Topics addressed will include:
- Sensing horror – violence, affect and the body
- Horror’s body politics – gender, race and otherness
- Time and horror – from the ancient to the modern
- Space and horror – haunted spaces, confinement and alienation
- Technologies of horror – from Frankenstein to new media
- National horrors – conflict, repression and national identity
- Horror spectatorship – pleasure, fear and fandom
- Horror industries – the production, distribution and censorship of horror
This course examines visions of horror spanning the genre, from The Wolf Man to Wolf Creek and Suspiria to The Ring, from The Evil Dead to The Walking Dead and Halloween to Silent Hill. It will introduce students to the vast and and growing body of critical and theoretical work devoted to horror media, and will equip them to understand and respond to key debates regarding horror’s forms, functions, effects and affects.
Availability 2017
Semester 1
Lecturer(s)
Coordinator(s) Associate Professor Allan Cameron
Points
FTVMS 336: 15 points
Prerequisites
30 points at Stage II in Media, Film and Television
Restrictions
FTVMS 236
